Archive for December, 2025

“Close your eyes, prick up your ears, and from the softest sound to the wildest noise, from the simplest tone to the highest harmony, from the most violent, passionate scream to the gentlest words of sweet reason, it is Nature who speaks, revealing her being, her power, her life, and her relatedness.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Humanity now faces perhaps the biggest choice it will ever make: continue down the road to a future devastated by climate change, dwindling Nature, degraded land, and polluted air, land and water, or change direction to secure a healthy planet, healthy people, and prosperity for all.”

—Inger Anderson, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme 

“Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality.”

—Alexander von Humboldt

The recent launch of a major UN report on Nature assesses global crises and spells out how our urgent need to look for unconventional non-status-quo solutions translates into doable actions that then become a catalyst for a transformation Nature can then thrive on. By looking at such topics as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and waste and land degradation, as well as desertification issues, we can find equitable responses. Over three years the UN’s Environment Programme brought together nearly 300 scientists to create the Global Environment Outlook (GEO).

This is the seventh edition under that endeavour—hence the name GEO-7. The report is 1242 pages long. There are multiple chapters covering food, oceans and coasts, freshwater, land and soil, Indigenous and local knowledge, and the social, ecological and economic goals of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but also financial systems solutions are explored to underscore solid successes.

https://tinyurl.com/unep-geo-7

After assessing present worldwide on-the-ground situations, the report delves deeper into the critical transformations needed for a resilient functioning global society. It even looks at how beneficial a circular economy (as opposed to an economy based on extractivism, like ours) can be by limiting everything from plastic waste to agricultural pollution. GEO-7 tells us: “A global shift to a circular economy is a leading solution to the interconnected environmental crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, and pollution and waste… A circular flow of resources in the economy will also contribute positively to socioeconomic development while safeguarding Nature and people.” 

A Future We Choose: Why investing in Earth now can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all is GEO-7’s title for remaking in many instances the global north’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples, the global south and the biosphere. Diversity and inclusiveness are necessary if the tapestry of society is to be equitable, and social and ecological justice to have a fair chance of success.

GEO-7’s raison d’être is based on detailing our largest human-created planetary problems and asking the difficult questions regarding the outlook for transformation towards a more just future. It “calls on all actors, governments, nongovernmental and multilateral organizations, the public, including Indigenous Peoples, civil society, academia and professional organizations, as well as the private sector to acknowledge the urgency of the global environmental crises and to collaborate in the co-design and implementation of integrated policies, strategies and actions. Such coordinated actions can initiate a process of change that transforms socio-ecological systems. Equitable and just transformations fundamentally require a shift away from the concentration of power and wealth, away from short-term decisions prioritizing individual and material gains, and away from the disconnection from and domination over Nature. This shift involves values moving away from extractivism and unsustainable patterns of consumption towards regenerative socio-ecological systems based on reciprocity and care.” 

In a way it is a peace plan with ourselves and Nature. By speaking about our planetary crises unflinchingly, GEO-7 is able to show governments, corporations and individuals ways to break out of dead-end failures towards a vibrant future, “the future we choose.”

My last article, written two weeks ago, “Factory Farms Feed Inequality and Violence,” focused on the huge harms industrial farming has visited on the rainforests of the Amazon. Of course it was in Belém, Brazil where the UN conference on climate change (COP30) took place this last month, and—rightfully so—emphasis was placed on protecting tropical forests. 

The deforestation of the Amazon is being perpetrated by multinational companies for their ill-gotten and unethical profits by primarily growing soybeans to feed chickens and cattle around the world, including in Québec. GEO-7’s answer: “Achieving a sustainable global food system requires moving away from pursuing the lowest-cost foods, which are often nutritionally poor and unsustainably produced… Yet, 700—800 million people remain undernourished and there are increasingly high rates of obesity in most countries, highlighting that delivering cheap food does not ensure equitable or healthy nutrition… The current global food system fails to provide food security for all or end malnourishment in all forms, while creating substantial negative ecological and societal impacts that affect the achievement of many sustainable development goals.”

It is well understood that Canada’s cheap fast-food options simply do nothing to help lessen the food crisis, including the obesity epidemic. GEO-7 mentions better education commitments to combat these issues.

The UN conferences try to engage and finally find consensus with all nations. Meanwhile, GEO-7 is a vital tool to demonstrate to all nations the avenues and pathways that provide clear guidance on how to get to the transformative policy decisions debated frequently at UN climate, UN biodiversity, UN desertification and CITES summits, which are attended by politicians and their countries’ delegates. In so doing, GEO-7 is the way to break through the status quo by giving straightforward solutions to seemingly intransigent problems. 

Vitally, GEO-7 also gives individual countries and regions the tools on how to create national pathways towards resilient solutions that do not have to rely on consensus as is found in UN conferences such as COP30. Countries with different income levels are given the opportunity to lead on such areas as resource consumption, while development can bypass older destructive technologies and is given targeted support.

Trillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of employment opportunities will come to nations that want to reestablish strong connections with Nature and end inequitable concentration of power and wealth. Again, Indigenous knowledge comes to the forefront to help the rest of us transform our food systems. GEO-7 emphasizes: “In the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous agroforestry systems incorporate diverse crops and trees that mimic the natural forest structure, supporting soil health [and] biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem functions.”

I think of Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, who brought countries together for the Paris Agreement in 2015 and said: “Impossible is not a fact. It’s an attitude… And I decided, right then and there, that I was going to change my attitude, and I was going to help the world change its attitude on climate change.” It is possible for individuals to make a huge difference in their communities.

The two inspiring videos below show how a passion for the rejuvenation of Nature can be wildly successful. In each case degraded land flourishes because of the unswerving dedication of one person. The first story takes place in New Zealand and the second in Sweden. Maria was called “naive” and Johannes one of the “fools and dreamers” when they started out on their quests to revitalize the Earth’s lands.

https://tinyurl.com/30-year-forest

https://tinyurl.com/Sweden-forest

Moving on to a new year and watching these two short videos can be a magical way to reenergize our commitments to the planet and to all species who live on it.

“As societies grow more unequal and extractive, decision making becomes worse… Warlordism, statehood, and organized crime all have similar ingredients: a hierarchy that coercively extracts resources from a territory and population.”

—Luke Kemp, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse 

The 2009 film The Age of Stupid examines, from the not-so-distant vantage point of 2055, a wrenching question: if humans were able to see the devastation caused by human-induced climate change in the beginning years of the 21st century, why did they do nothing to stop it?

The answer can perhaps be found in the ways oligarchs, plutocrats, psychopaths and autocrats nourish inequality. If rich societies since 1850 could extract and then dump their carbon, plastic and pesticide waste around the world, why not continue and basically refuse to help others adapt to their created mess?

While climate justice is all about stopping societal collapse by not being ransomed by deliberate under-education and abject greed, an extractive patriarchal and hierarchical society will always collapse, historians and archaeologists tell us. Profit-driven groups can’t possibly contemplate a degrowth template for turning away from the precipice. 

One way in which we can address the inequities of human-induced climate breakdown is by considering the food on our plates. Long-standing campaign group Compassion in World Farming states: “Over the last half a century, factory farming has risen to become one of the major issues affecting the future of our planet. It is the world’s biggest cause of animal cruelty and a primary driver of wildlife declines. At the same time, it is a serious pollutant, contributing to climate change and marine dead zones, and a potent source of disease that risks future pandemics. In a world of growing climate, Nature collapse, and pandemic emergencies, ending factory farming has never been more urgent.” https://tinyurl.com/factory-industrial-animals

When speaking about the enormous concerns regarding industrial farming, individuals, companies and governments are often both afraid to act to bring about the urgent change needed and unwilling to be the first to enact that change. Industrial agriculture’s megalithic status quo will eventually fail, but until then what is left to spring the Earth’s biosphere back to health?

Last month’s climate summit (COP30) in Belém, Brazil should have been a place to start this conversation. The ecologically destabilizing deforestation taking place in Brazil has forged Indigenous alliances. They have been shut out of past climate conferences, but at COP30 they were easily heard, even if it meant breaking down the barriers.

And encouragingly, just prior to the summit, the Brazilian government launched a vital new project, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which aims to reverse tropical deforestation, with a US$1 billion seed fund. The fund rose to 5.5 billion dollars during the conference and will hopefully reach 125 billion. https://tinyurl.com/TFFF-seed-fund 

However, pressed by agriculture conglomerates, Brazil has permitted more Amazon and Cerrado clearance, primarily for soybean cultivation and animal farming, and there are also plenty of illegal operations. All this is playing havoc with the country’s water reserves, and on top of this Brazil’s jaguars, half of the world population, are being forced out of the Amazon to make way for plantations of soya for the global production of industrially raised chickens. See this short video to learn some of what is at stake: https://tinyurl.com/cerrado-destruction

Speciesism (prejudice and discrimination against other species) is alive and well in many Canadians’ hearts. Soybean meal and grains from Brazil, the US and Canada feed North America’s growing and seemingly unquenchable lust for eating intensively reared chickens and cows. (Tens of billions of factory-produced chickens are killed each year.) Why feed perfectly nutritious foods such as soybeans and grains to caged animals when humans can have far better and more efficient access by eating these foods direct? 

It should be obvious to anyone living in 2025 that what is happening to Brazil’s forests will eventually impact the widespread disregard for the planet shown by people in the global north, including Canadian citizens. The building of roads and the burning down of tropical forests for soybeans to fatten factory chickens accelerate climate breakdown and will affect us all, just as the recent wildfires caused by human climate malfeasance in Canada affect the rest of the world well after those fires stop smouldering. 

Starvation shouldn’t be a policy of governments. Study after study shows that wildlife is directly in the crosshairs of intensive farms, whether that be in Africa, Asia, South America or North America. If we love wildlife, one answer to protect it is to stop eating intensively raised animals.

The Humane League points out that chickens “are subjected to some of the most inhumane treatments of any factory-farmed animal. Extreme confinement, surgical procedures performed without painkillers, and the denial of normal socialization opportunities are among the many factors that make these chickens’ lives difficult and at times unbearable.”https://tinyurl.com/farm-cruelty

On top of the cruelty of these hapless animals’ short lives, and the enormous wastage of clean water by industrial farms, the manure produced impacts lands, rivers and lakes and pollutes our air. Ellen K. Silbergeld in her timely book Chickenizing Farms and Food: How Industrial Meat Production Endangers Workers, Animals and Consumers, explains: 

“Ecologically, overloading soils with waste-borne nutrients results in overloading surface waters with these nutrients. With rains and runoff, as much as 50 percent of the applied nutrients are lost before they can be absorbed into soils. This results in enriching surface waters, which is a major contributor to the degradation of these systems. In many regions, food animal production is the major source of adverse impacts on the health of surface waters and coastal waters… The impacts can be chronic, impairing the habitability of waterways for aquatic life and their utility for human recreation, or acute, resulting in massive fish kills and harmful algal blooms…” 

Unbridled extreme extractive growth is not only being served up at the tables of billionaires. The recent frenzy of Black Friday’s month-long extravaganza of super-consumerism, together with its green-washing spin-offs, permeates many Canadians’ dreams to join the oligarchs’ clubs. Cheap goods and nutritionally poor food hyper-drive us towards a depleted Earth and a wasting democracy. Enter populist demagogues who are more than pleased to rip off an addicted population in the name of promises of security and low food prices: the industrial mega-farm is a dream come true.

A comprehensive report by the Center for Biological Diversity explains that “the industry also contributes to food insecurity, poor public health, antibiotic resistance, environmental injustice, dangerous worker conditions, inequality and the inhumane treatment of other animals.” https://tinyurl.com/extinction-plate

Food waste contributes to hunger and the despoiling of land that produces that same food. Food justice enables the poorest people to move away from the often toxic contaminated menus originating in factory farms. 

How can we transition to a kinder, more equitable food system? Here we might turn again to Silbergeld:

“Reform—feasible and sustainable reform for an agriculture that feeds the world — needs the participation and stamina of all of us to achieve the changes necessary for health, nutrition, animal welfare, social dignity, and sustainability. The power of ordinary people eventually becomes the power of change. The food industry is remarkably responsive when it comes to consumer disfavor.”

Even those of us who don’t want to protest on the streets can play their part. Earth-friendly diets are a way out from supporting, perhaps inadvertently, the horrors of feeding oligarchs’ love for wildlife extinction and climate chaos. https://tinyurl.com/extinction-off-table

Right now, as well as in good time for the end-of-year holidays, you can find some fabulous recipes that don’t cost the Earth at https://tinyurl.com/earth-friendly-recipes